Belgian DNA is no Madeleine match

DNA tests on a drink bottle taken from a Belgian café where police are investigating a sighting of Madeleine McCann have failed to produce a match with the missing four-year-old.

However, local reports said Belgian detectives had not ruled out the possibility that Madeleine was seen at the café, because the DNA matched that of a man.

The tests were ordered after a child therapist said she was "100% sure" she saw the missing British girl in a restaurant in Tongeren near the Dutch border on July 28.

The DNA tests were taken on a bottle of yoghurt and fruit juice drink which police removed from the restaurant.

Newspaper reports in Belgium and Holland quoted police sources as saying the drink bottle held no DNA traces linked to Madeleine. However, a Belgian police spokeswoman said she was unable to confirm the reports.

Belgian police, who will make a statement later today, have so far been unable to trace a Belgian-registered Volvo estate car that the couple drove away in. There have also been no positive responses to an identikit picture of the man described as in his 40s, regional press reported.

Police were contacted after the child therapist spotted a blonde girl with an English-speaking woman and a Dutch man who she described as acting strangely.

The therapist told a waitress at the restaurant, Jolien Houbrech, that the couple was not acting like a mother and father.

"She had noticed that the behaviour was not that of normal parents," Ms Houbrech said.

Meanwhile, blood samples taken from the Portuguese apartment where Madeleine was last seen will reach a British laboratory today for analysis.

The samples, which are understood to have been found by a team of police sniffer dogs from Leicestershire, will be examined by scientists from the Forensic Science Service, based in Birmingham, the Guardian understands.

The first task for scientists will be to try to get a DNA sample from the blood, reported to have been found on a wall of the villa in Praia da Luz where the McCann family was staying.

Reports in the Portuguese press have suggested police have known for some months that Madeleine died in the apartment on May 3.

The Diario de Noticias (DN) quoted a source close to the inquiry who said police had discounted kidnaping. The source alleged detectives from Britain and Portugal had been closely monitoring the movements of the parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, since Madeleine's disappearance.

Police sources allegedly told DN that they were concentrating "on the family circle and their friends", some of whom had allegedly been under surveillance in the UK.

Mr McCann told Sky News yesterday that he and his wife "strongly believed" Madeleine was alive when she was taken from the apartment. Coming under scrutiny from detectives was "difficult" but they were "more than happy" to cooperate, he said.

"We expect the same thoroughness and to be treated the same way as anyone else who has been in and around this," Mr McCann said.